Why do i bother with Channel 9

I have often had people ask me why I bother with Channel 9.  I have often been called a Microsoft basher, that I am too critical of Microsoft.  Believe it or not i do like Microsoft, I really like their products, their development tools and multimedia tools are world class.  SFU has saved me countless hours with interoperability issues and I do like their OS more than I do like Linux or the Mac.  I think there are some things that Microsoft and their engineers could do differently but hey thats their decision to do things the way they want to.  When I say I like Apache or Netscape, its not that Im being contradictory or difficult its just that there are some features I like in those products that IE or IIS dont do.  I do realize that the MS guys do a hard job and I dont think the Linux community or Apple could do a better job if they had the sheer user base that Microsoft enjoys.  Microsoft has to produce software that works as flawless as possible with hundreds of thousands of hardware products, millions of software applications and they have to provide tools for billions of people worldwide to work with their products.  They have to speak many languages throughout the world.  Those are hard tasks and I dont think many people understand it.  I surf Channel 9 because its a cool site.  When Jim Allchin did a segment with Lenn that was extremely cool. just the thought that Alchin took his time out to do a segment that he didnt have to do just to address the Channel 9 users was great, Im still waiting for Channel 9 to have a video with Bill Gates,.  Channel 9 is extremely useful because we get to interact with our peers in the Windows community, we are hated by most, and to talk to other developers and we get to tell Microsoft what we think whether they disagree or not.   My only reccomendation for Channel 9 is to have more XBox content and talk with more Windows developers because being an OS enthusiast I like to hear about the OS.

Nicely put, you make a lot of lucid intelligent comments. One remark really got my attention though...

When is Lenn going to nail the Bill G interview???

After getting Jim 'Prince of Darkness Alchin' they're going to have to do one better next.

When will Lenn land the big interview Linus and Lucy?

Simo wrote:

Nicely put, you make a lot of lucid intelligent comments. One remark really got my attention though...

When is Lenn going to nail the Bill G interview???

After getting Jim 'Prince of Darkness Alchin' they're going to have to do one better next.

A live chat with Bill would be good.. although we might make him cry or something..

There would be a feeding frenzy among all the sleaziy British Tech Tabloid want-to-be journalists who post here continually.  

[Edited] Stupid coment . Added nothing to the conversation.

I totally agree. Channel 9 helps MS make their products better, by getting feedback from us. It also give us some insight as to why they make the decisions that they do.

An interview with Bill Gates would be interesting. I just wonder, what would he talk about? What would we ask him?

I thought of one question. What does the richest man in the world do for fun?? or in his spare time??

Competes in Bridge games

CRPietschmann wrote:

I thought of one question. What does the richest man in the world do for fun?? or in his spare time??

Play's Halo 2 and some betas for Xbox 2 ...
[edited] Probably play some others beta like wow or tribes , some closed ones like Eq2 ... OMG , he probably can play everything beta , hehehe.

Bill G interview would be awesome!!  I would like to know what role he had in the creation of .NET.

JamesC wrote:

I would like to know what role he had in the creation of .NET.

About Microsoft and Apple

Microsoft made a GUI-based OS on top of a hardware abstraction layer. Mac built a beautiful GUI-OS hard-coded to a specific hardware set. Most of us (including me) do not fully appreciate how difficult it is to build against abstraction. But that’s not all: Microsoft engineers backward-compatibility and every Mac user knows how quickly Apple can tell you to throw your old stuff away.

What many Channel9 surfers may not know because they are not indirectly or directly responsible to shareholders is that speaking unscripted in front of a camera in front of a general audience is very difficult because you can’t really speak as a human being. You are representing the virtual person that is the corporation Microsoft so mistakes will be made and certain teams that should answer our innocent questions are unable to do so.

However, the great thing about this commercial culture of is postmodern, new-world order is that speaking on behalf of a virtual person can be made into a matter of pride, nay, a moral high value! David Bowie called it, “Modern Love.”

So I really sense that the Channel9 team “love” what they are doing and many of their interviewees “love” to talk shop. Don Box distinguished himself as one of the few people who could speak like a human being and deal with the virtual personhood at the same time. It’s going to be quite a challenge to point the camera at more Don Box types. W2 labor camps don’t require charisma from most of its employees.